The Illustrations.

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.“Any Earthen Ware; buy a jug or a tea pot?”

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.

“Any Earthen Ware; buy a jug or a tea pot?”

Any old flint glass or broken bottles for a poor woman to-day?

“Fresh Oysters! penny a lot!”

Sweet primroses, four bunches a penny, primroses!Black and white heart cherries, twopence a pound, full weight, all round and sound!

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.“Buy my Sweet Roses?”

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.

“Buy my Sweet Roses?”

Fine ripe duke cherries, a ha’penny a stick and a penny a stick, ripe duke cherries!Shrimps like prawns, a ha’penny a pot!Green hastings!

“Fine large Cucumbers!”

Hot pudding!Pots and kettles to mend!’Ere’s yer toys for girls an’ boys!

Brick-dust was carried on the backs of asses and sold for knife-cleaning purposes at a penny a quart.

“’Ere’s yer toys for girls an’ boys!”

The bellows-mender, who sometimes also followed the trade of a tinker, carried his tools and apparatus buckled in a leathern bag at his back, and practised his profession in any convenient corner of the street.

Door-mats of all shapes were made of rushes or rope, and were sold at from sixpence to several shillings each.

The earliest green pea brought to the London market—a dwarf variety—was distinguished by the name of Hasteds, Hastens, Hastins, or Hastings, and was succeeded by the Hotspur. The name of Hastings was, however, indiscriminately given to all peas sold in the streets, and the cry of “green Hastings” was heard in every street and alley until peas went out of season.

The crier of hair brooms, who usually travelled with a cart, carried a supply of brushes, sieves, clothes-horses, lines, and general turnery.

All cleanly folk must like my ware,For wood is sweet and clean;Time was when platters served Lord MayorAnd, as I’ve heard, a Queen.

His cry took the form of the traditional tune “Buy a broom,” which may even now be occasionally heard—perhaps the last survival of a street trade tune—taken

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.“Curds and Whey!”

Rowlandson Delin. 1819.

“Curds and Whey!”

up separately or in fitful chorus by the men and women of a travelling store. The Flemish “Buy a Broom” criers, whose trade is gone, generally went in couples or threes. Their figures are described by Hone as exactly miniatured in the unpainted wooden doll, shaped the same before and behind, and sold in the toy shops for the amusement of the little ones. In the comedy of “The Three Ladies of London,” printed in quarto in Queen Elizabeth’s reign (A.D.1584), is this passage:—

“Enter Conscience with brooms at her back, singing as follows:—

New brooms, green brooms, will you buy any?Maydens come quickly, let me take a penny.”

Hot rolls, which were sold at one and two a penny, were carried during the summer months between the hours of 8 and 9 in the morning, and from 4 to 6 in the afternoon.

Let Fame puff her trumpet, for muffin and crumpet,They cannot compare with my dainty hot rolls;When mornings are chilly, sweet Fanny, young Billy,Your hearts they will comfort, my gay little souls.

Muffins and crumpets were then, as now, principally cried during the winter months.

Hot pudding, sweet, heavy and indigestible, was sold in halfpenny slabs.

Who wants some pudding nice and hot!’Tis now the time to try it;Just taken from the smoking pot,And taste before you buy it.

The cry “One-a-penny, two-a-penny,hotCROSSBUNS!” which,—now never heard from the sellers on Good Friday,—is still part of a child’s game, remains as one of the best instances of English quantitative metre, being repeated in measured time, and not merely by the ordinary accent. The rhubarb-selling Turk, who appeared in turban, trousers, and—what was then almost unknown amongst civilians—moustaches, was, fifty years ago or more, a well known character in the metropolis.

Sand was generally used in London, not only for cleaning kitchen utensils, but for sprinkling over uncarpeted floors as a protection against dirty footsteps. It was sold by measure—red sand, twopence halfpenny, and white a penny farthing per peck. The very melodious catch, “White Sand and Grey Sand, Who’ll buy my White Sand!” was evidently harmonized on the sand-seller’s traditional tune.

“Buy a bill of the play!” In the time of our greatgrandfathers, there were no scented programmes, and the peculiar odour of the play-bills was not due to the skill of a Rimmel. Vilely printed with the stickiest of ink, on the commonest of paper, they were disposed of both in and outside the theatre by orange-women, who would give one to a purchaser of half a dozen oranges or so. In Hogarth’s inimitably amusing and characteristic print ofThe Laughing Audience, a couple of robustly built orange-women are contending, with well-filled baskets, for the favour of a bewigged beau of the period, who appears likely to become an easy victim to their persuasions.

“Knives to grind” is still occasionally heard, and the grinder’s barrow (videthat depicted in Rowlandson’s illustration on p. 59), is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. At the beginning of the century the charge for grinding and setting scissors was a penny or twopence a pair; penknives a penny a blade, and table-knives one and sixpence and two shillings a dozen.

Rabbits were carried about the streets suspended at either end of a pole which rested on the shoulder.

The edible marine herb samphire, immortalized in connection with “Shakespeare’s Cliff” at Dover, was at one time regularly culled and as regularly eaten.

The once familiar cry of “Green rushes O!” is

“Cherries, fourpence a pound!”

preserved only in verse. In Queen Elizabeth’s time the floors of churches as well as private houses were carpeted with rushes, and in Shakespeare’s day the stage was strewn with them. Rush-bearing, a festival having its origin in connection with the annual renewal of rushes in churches, was kept up until quite recently, and may even still be practised in out-of-the-way villages.

The stock of the “’arthstone” woman, who is not above doing a stroke of business in bones, bottles, and kitchen stuff, is usually on a barrow, drawn by a meek-eyed and habitually slow-paced donkey.

The London Barrow Woman (“Ripe Cherries”), as preserved in the cut from the inimitable pencil of George Cruikshank, has long since disappeared. In 1830, when this sketch was made, the artist had to rely on his memory, for she then no longer plied her trade in the streets. Her wares changed with the seasons; but here a small schoolboy is being tempted by ripe cherries tied on a stick. There being no importation of foreign fruit, the cherries were of prime quality. May dukes, White heart, Black heart, and the Kentish cherry, succeeded each other—and, when sold by weight, and not tied on sticks, fetched sixpence, fourpence, or threepence per lb., which was at least twopence or threepence less than charged at the shops.

“Ripe Cherries!”

The poor Barrow Woman appears to have been treated very much in the same manner as the modern costermonger; but was without his bulldog power of resistance. If she stopped to rest or solicit custom, street keepers, “authorized by orders unauthorized by law,” drove her off, or beadles overthrew her fruit into the road. Nevertheless, if Cruikshank has not idealized his memories, she was more wholesomely and stoutly clad than any street seller of her sex—with the one exception of the milkmaid—who is to be seen in our day, when the poor London woman has lost the instinct of neatness and finish in attire.

“Hot spiced gingerbread,” still to be found in a cold state at village fairs and junketings, used to be sold in winter time in the form of flat oblong cakes at a halfpenny each, but it has long since disappeared from our streets.

“Tiddy Diddy Doll, lol, lol, lol” was a celebrated vendor of gingerbread, and, according to Hone, was always hailed as the king of itinerant tradesmen. It must be more than a century since this dandified character ceased to amuse the populace. He dressed as a person of rank—ruffled shirt, white silk stockings, and fashionable laced suit of clothes surmounted by a wig and cocked hat decorated with a feather. He was sure to be found plying his trade on Lord Mayor’s

“Tiddy Diddy Doll.”

day, at open air shows, and on all public occasions. He amused the crowd to his own profit; and some of his humorous nonsense has been preserved.

“Mary, Mary, where are younow, Mary?”

“I live two steps underground, with a wiscom riscom, and why not. Walk in, ladies and gentlemen. My shop is on the second floor backwards, with a brass knocker at the door. Here’s your nice gingerbread, your spiced gingerbread, which will melt in your mouth like a red-hot brickbat, and rumble in your inside like Punch in his wheelbarrow!” He always finished up by singing the fag end of a song—“Tiddy Diddy Doll, lol, lol, lol;” hence his nickname of Tiddy Doll. Hogarth has introduced this character in his Execution scene of the Idle Apprentice at Tyburn. Tiddy Doll had many feeble imitators; and the woman described in the lines that follow, taken from a child’s book of the period, must have been one of them.

Tiddy Diddy Doll, lol, lol, lol,Tiddy Diddy Doll, dumplings, oh!Her tub she carries on her head,Tho’ of’ener under arm.In merry song she cries her trade,Her customers to charm.A halfpenny a plain can buy,The plum ones cost a penny,And all the naughty boys will cryBecause they can’t get any.

“Large silver eels!”

Fifty years ago “Young Lambs to Sell, two for a penny,” which still lingers, was a well known cry. They were children’s toys, the fleece made of white cotton-wool, attractively but perhaps a trifle too unnaturally spangled with Dutch gilt. The head was of composition, the cheeks were painted red, there were two black spots to do duty for eyes, and the horns and legs were of tin, which latter adornment, my younger readers may suggest, foreshadowed the insufficiently appreciated tinned mutton of a later period. The addition of a bit of pink tape tied round the neck by way of a collar made a graceful finish, and might be accepted as a proof that the baby sheep was perfectly tame.

Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell.Two for a penny, young lambs to sell.If I’d as much money as I could tell,I wouldn’t cry young lambs to sell.Dolly and Molly, Richard and Nell,Buy my Young Lambs and I’ll use you well!

The later song—

Old chairs to mend, old chairs to mend.If I’d as much money as I could spend,I’d leave off crying old chairs to mend—

—is obviously copied from the original cry of “Young Lambs to Sell.” In addition to a few tools, the stock-in-trade of the travelling chair-mender principally consisted of rushes, which in later days gave place to cane split into strips of uniform width—a return to more

“Young lambs to sell.”

“Buy my fine Myrtles and Roses!”

ancient practice. The use of rush-bottomed chairs, which are again coming into æsthetic fashion, cannot be traced back quite a century and half. The chairs in Queen Anne’s time were seated and backed with cane; and in the days of Elizabeth the seats werecushioned and the backs stuffed. Many years ago an old chair-mender occupied a position by a stone fixed in the wall of one of the houses in Panyer Alley, on which is cut the following inscription:—

When y have sovghᵀ..The City RovndYet Still this isThe HighSᵀ.. GrovndAvgvst the 271688

Being entirely unprotected and close to the ground, this curious relic of bygone times, which is surmounted by a boldly carved figure of a nude boy seated on a panyer pressing a bunch of grapes between his hand and foot, is naturally much defaced; and that it has not been carried away piecemeal by iconoclastic curiosity-hunters, is probably due to its out-of-the-way position. Panyer Alley, the most eastern turning leading from Paternoster Row to Newgate Street, slightly rises towards the middle; but is not, according to Mr. Loftie, an undoubted authority on all matters pertaining to old London, the highest point in the city, there being higher ground both in Cornhill and Cannon Street. In describing Panyer Alley, Stow indirectly alludes to a “signe” therein, and it is Hone’s opinion that this stone may have been the ancient sign let into the wall of a tavern. While the upper is in fair preservation, the lower part of the inscription can hardly be read. When last examined, a street urchin was renovating the figure by a heartily-laid-on surface decoration of white chalk; and unless one of the numerous antiquarian or other learned societies interested in old London relics will spare a few pounds for the purchase of a protective grating, there will shortly be nothing left worth preserving.

“New-laid eggs, eight a groat,” takes us back to atime when the best joints and fresh country butter were both sixpence a pound.

Years ago the tin oven of the peripatetic penny pieman was found to be too small to meet the constant and ever-increasing strain made upon its resources; and the owner thereof has now risen to the dignity of a shop, where, in addition to stewed eels, he dispenses what Albert Smith happily termed “covered uncertainties,” containing messes of mutton, beef, or seasonable fruit. Contained in a strong wicker basket with legs, or in a sort of tin oven, the pieman’s wares were formerly kept hot by means of a small charcoal fire. A sip of a warm stomachic liquid of unknown but apparently acceptable constituents was sometimes offered gratuitously by way of inducement to purchase. The cry of “Hot Pies” still accompanies one of the first and most elementary games of the modern baby learning to speak, who is taught by his nurse to raise his hand to imitate a call now never heard.

The specimens of versification that follow are culled from various books of London Cries, written for the amusement of children, towards the end of the last century, and now in the collection of the writer:—

Large silver eels—a groat a pound, live eels!Not the Severn’s famed streamCould produce better fish,Sweet and fresh as new cream,And what more could you wish?Pots and Kettles to mend?Your coppers, kettles, pots, and stew pans,Tho’ old, shall serve instead of new pans.I’m very moderate in my charge,For mending small as well as large.Buy a Mop or a Broom!My mop is so big, it might serve as a wigFor a judge if he had no objection,And as to my brooms, they’ll sweep dirty rooms,And make the dust fly to perfection.Nice Yorkshire Cakes!Nice Yorkshire cakes, come buy of me,I have them crisp and brown;They are very good to eat with tea,And fit for lord or clown.Buy my fine Myrtles and Roses!Come buy my fine roses, my myrtles and stocks,My sweet-smelling balsams and close-growing box.

Large silver eels—a groat a pound, live eels!Not the Severn’s famed streamCould produce better fish,Sweet and fresh as new cream,And what more could you wish?

Pots and Kettles to mend?Your coppers, kettles, pots, and stew pans,Tho’ old, shall serve instead of new pans.I’m very moderate in my charge,For mending small as well as large.

Buy a Mop or a Broom!

My mop is so big, it might serve as a wigFor a judge if he had no objection,And as to my brooms, they’ll sweep dirty rooms,And make the dust fly to perfection.

Nice Yorkshire Cakes!

Nice Yorkshire cakes, come buy of me,I have them crisp and brown;They are very good to eat with tea,And fit for lord or clown.

Buy my fine Myrtles and Roses!Come buy my fine roses, my myrtles and stocks,My sweet-smelling balsams and close-growing box.

Buy my nice Drops—twenty a penny, Peppermint drops!

Rowlandson Delin 1819“Pots and Kettles to Mend!”

Rowlandson Delin 1819

“Pots and Kettles to Mend!”

If money is plenty you may sure spare a penny,It will purchase you twenty—and that’s a great many.

Six bunches a penny, sweet blooming Lavender!Just put one bundle to your nose,What rose can this excel?Throw it among your finest clothes,And grateful they will smell.Buy a live Chicken or a young Fowl?Buy a young Chicken fat and plump,Or take two for a shilling?—Is this poor honest tradesman’s cry;Come buy if you are willing.Rabbit! Rabbit!Rabbit! a Rabbit! who will buy?Is all you hear from him;The rabbit you may roast or fry,The fur your cloak will trim.My good Sir, will you buy a Bowl?My honest friend, will you buy a Bowl,A Skimmer or a Platter?Come buy of me a Rolling Pin,Or Spoon to beat your batter.

Six bunches a penny, sweet blooming Lavender!

Just put one bundle to your nose,What rose can this excel?Throw it among your finest clothes,And grateful they will smell.

Buy a live Chicken or a young Fowl?

Buy a young Chicken fat and plump,Or take two for a shilling?—Is this poor honest tradesman’s cry;Come buy if you are willing.

Rabbit! Rabbit!

Rabbit! a Rabbit! who will buy?Is all you hear from him;The rabbit you may roast or fry,The fur your cloak will trim.

My good Sir, will you buy a Bowl?

My honest friend, will you buy a Bowl,A Skimmer or a Platter?Come buy of me a Rolling Pin,Or Spoon to beat your batter.

“Six bunches a penny, sweet blooming Lavender!”

Come buy my fine Writing Ink!Through many a street and many a townThe Ink-man shapes his way;The trusty Ass keeps plodding on,His master to obey.Dainty Sweet-Briar!Sweet-Briar this Girl on one side holds,And Flowers in the other basket;And for the price, she that unfoldsTo any one who’ll ask it.

Come buy my fine Writing Ink!

Through many a street and many a townThe Ink-man shapes his way;The trusty Ass keeps plodding on,His master to obey.

Dainty Sweet-Briar!

Sweet-Briar this Girl on one side holds,And Flowers in the other basket;And for the price, she that unfoldsTo any one who’ll ask it.

Any Earthen Ware, Plates, Dishes, or Jugs to-day,—any Clothes to exchange, Madam?

Come buy my Earthen WareYour dresser to bedeck;Examine it with care,There’s not a single speck.See white with edges brown,Others with edges blue;Have you a left-off gown,Old bonnet, hat, or shoe?Do look me up some clothesFor this fine China jar;If but a pair of shoes,For I have travelled far.This flowered bowl of greenIs worth a gown at least;I am sure it might be seenAt any christening feast.Do, Madam, look aboutAnd see what you can find;Whatever you bring outI will not be behind.

Come buy my Earthen WareYour dresser to bedeck;Examine it with care,There’s not a single speck.

See white with edges brown,Others with edges blue;Have you a left-off gown,Old bonnet, hat, or shoe?

Do look me up some clothesFor this fine China jar;If but a pair of shoes,For I have travelled far.

This flowered bowl of greenIs worth a gown at least;I am sure it might be seenAt any christening feast.

Do, Madam, look aboutAnd see what you can find;Whatever you bring outI will not be behind.

Ten of the illustrations by that great master of the art of caricature, Thomas Rowlandson, are copied infacsimilefrom a scarce set, fifty-four in all, published in 1820, entitled “Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders,” to which there is a powerful preface, as follows:—

“The British public must be already acquainted with numerous productions from the inimitable pencil of Mr.Rowlandson, who has particularly distinguished himself in this department.

“There is so much truth and genuine feeling in hisdelineations of human character, that no one can inspect the present collection without admiring his masterly style of drawing and admitting his just claim to originality. The great variety of countenance, expression, and situation, evince an active and lively feeling, which he has so happily infused into the drawings as to divest them of that broad caricature which is too conspicuous in the works of those artists who have followed his manner. Indeed, we may venture to assert that, since the time of Hogarth, no artist has appeared in this country who could be considered his superior or even his equal.”

The two illustrations—“Lavender,” with a background representing Temple Bar, and “Fine Strawberries,” with a view of Covent Garden—are from “Plates Representing the Itinerant Traders of London in their ordinary Costume. Printed in 1805 as a supplement to ‘Modern London’ (London: printed for Charles Phillips, 71, St. Paul’s Churchyard).” The set is chiefly interesting as representing London scenes of the period; many parts of which are now no longer recognisable.

The crudely drawn, but picturesquely treated “Catnach” cuts, from the celebrated Catnach press in Seven Dials, now owned by Mr. W. S. Fortey, hardly require separately indicating.

The four oval cuts, squared by the addition of perpendicular lines, “Hot spice gingerbread!” “O’ Clo!” “Knives to Grind!” and “Cabbages O! Turnips!” are facsimiled from a little twopenny book, entitled, “The Moving Market; or, Cries of London, for the amusement of good children,” published in 1815 by J. Lumsden and Son, of Glasgow. It has a frontispiece representing a curious little four-in-hand carriage with dogs in place of horses, underneath which is printed this triplet:—

See, girls and boys who learning prize,Round London drive to hear the cries,Then learn your Book and ride likewise.”

The quaint cuts, “’Ere’s yer toys for girls an’ boys!” “New-laid eggs, eight a groat,—crack ’em and try ’em!” “Flowers, penny a bunch!” (frontispiece), and the three ballad singers, apparently taken from one of the earliest chap-books, are really but of yesterday. For these the writer is indebted to his friend, Mr. Joseph Crawhall, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who uses his cutting tools direct on the wood without any copy. Mr. Crawhall’s “Chap-book Chaplets,” and “Old ffrendes wyth newe Faces,” quaint quartos each with many hundreds of hand-coloured cuts in his own peculiar and inimitable style, and “Izaak Walton, his Wallet Book,” are fair examples of his skill in this direction.

Two plates unenclosed with borders—“Old Chairs to mend!” and “Buy a Live Goose?” are from that once common and now excessively scarce child’s book,The Cries of London as they are Daily Practised, published in 1804 by J. Harris, the successor of “honest John Newbery,” the well-known St. Paul’s Churchyard bookseller and publisher.

George Cruikshank’s London Barrow-woman (“Ripe Cherries”), “Tiddy Diddy Doll,” and other cuts, are from the original illustrations to Hone’s delightful “Every-Day Book,” recently republished by Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.

The cuts illustrating modern cries—“Sw-e-e-p!”; “Dust, O!”; “Ow-oo!”; “Fresh Cabbidge!”; and “Stinking Fish!” are from the facile pencil of Mr. D. McEgan.

Finally, in regard to the business card of pussy’s butcher, the veracious chronicler is inclined to think that an antiquarian might hesitate in pronouncing it to be quite so genuine as it looks. This opinion coincides with his own. In fact he made it himself. As a set-off, however, to the confession, let it be said that this is the solefantaisie d’occasionset down herein.

From “Notes and Queries.”

London Street Cry.—What is the meaning of the old London cry, “Buy a fine mousetrap, or atormentor for your fleas”? Mention of it is found in one of the Roxburghe ballads dated 1662, and, amongst others, in a work dated about fifty years earlier. The cry torments me, and only its elucidation will bring ease.

Andrew W. Tuer.

The Leadenhall Press, E.C.

London Street Cry(6th S. viii. 348).—Was not this really a “tormentor for yourflies”? The mouse-trap man would probably also sell little bunches of butcher’s broom (Ruscus, the mouse-thorn of the Germans), a very effective and destructive weapon in the hands of an active butcher’s boy, when employed to guard his master’s meat from the attacks of flies.

Edward Solly.

London Street Cry(6th S. viii. 348, 393).—The following quotations from Taylor, the Water Poet, may be of interest to Mr.Tuer:—

“I could name more, if so my Muse did please,Of Mowse Traps, and tormentors to kill Fleas.”The Travels of Twelve-pence.Yet shall my begg’ry no strange Suites devise,As monopolies to catch Fleas and Flyes.”The Beggar.Faringdon.Walter Haines.

“I could name more, if so my Muse did please,Of Mowse Traps, and tormentors to kill Fleas.”The Travels of Twelve-pence.

Yet shall my begg’ry no strange Suites devise,As monopolies to catch Fleas and Flyes.”The Beggar.Faringdon.Walter Haines.

I notice a query from you inN. and Q.about a London Street Cry which troubles you. Many of the curious adjuncts to Street Cries proper have, I apprehend, originally no meaning beyond drawing attention to the Crier by their whimsicality. I will give you an instance. Soon after the union between England and Ireland, a man with a sack on his back went regularly about the larger streets of Dublin. His cry was:

“Bits of Brass,Broken Glass,Old Iron,Bad luck to you, Castlereagh.”

Party feeling against Lord Castlereagh ran very high at the time, I believe, and the political adjunct to his cry probably brought the man more shillings than he got by his regular calling.

H. G. W.

P.S.—I find I have unconsciously made a low pun. The cry alluded to above would probably be understood and appreciated in the streets of Dublin at the present with reference to the Repeal of the Union.

London Street Cry.88, Friargate, Derby.

Dear Sir,—

The “Tormentor,” concerning which you inquire inNotes and Queriesof this date, was also known as a “Scratch-back,” and specimens are occasionally to be seen in the country. I recollect seeing one, of superior make, many years ago. An ivory hand, the fingers like those of “Jasper Packlemerton of atrocious memory,” were “curled as in the act of” scratching, a finely carved wrist-band of lace was the appropriate ornament, and the whole was attached to a slender ivory rod of say eighteen inches in length. The finger nails were sharpened, and the instrument was thus available for discomfiting “back-biters,” even whenengaged upon the most inaccessible portions of the human superficies. I have also seen a less costly article of the same sort carved out of pear-wood (or some similar material). It is probable that museums might furnish examples of the “back scratcher,” “scratch back,” or “tormentor for your fleas.”

Very truly yours,Alfred Wallis.

Junior Athenæum Club,

Piccadilly, W.

Dear Sir,—

On turning over the leaves ofNotes and QueriesI happened on your enquiryre“Tormentor for your fleas.” May I ask, have you succeeded in getting at the meaning or origin of this curious street cry? I have tried to trace it, but in vain. It occurs to me as just possible that the following circumstance may bear on it:—

The Japanese are annoyed a good deal with fleas. They make little cages of bamboo—such I suppose as a small bird cage or mouse-trap—containing plenty of bars and perches inside. These bars they smear over with bird-lime, and then take the cage to bed with them. Is it not, as I say,just possible, that oneof our ancient mariners brought the idea home with him and started it in London? If so, a maker of bird cages or mouse-traps is likely to have put the idea into execution, and cried his mouse-traps and “flea tormentors” in one breath.

Faithfully yours,Douglas Owen.

From “Notes and Queries,” April 18th, 1885.

London Cries.—A cheap and extended edition of myLondon Street Criesbeing on the eve of publication, I shall be glad of early information as to the meaning of “A dip and a wallop for a bawbee”[A] and “Water for the buggs.”[12]I recollect many years ago reading an explanation of the former, but am doubtful as to its correctness.

Andrew W. Tuer.

The Leadenhall Press, E.C.

One who was an Edinburgh student towards the end of last century told me that a man carrying a leg of mutton by the shank would traverse the streets crying “Twa dips and a wallop for a bawbee.” This broughtthe gude-wives to their doors with pails of boiling water, which was in this manner converted into “broth.”

Norman Chevers, M.D.

32, Tavistock Road, W.April 18th, 1885.

25,Argyll Road, Kensington, W.,

24th April, 1885.

Dear Mr. Tuer,—

The Cockney sound of long ā which is confused with receivedī, is very different from it, and where it approaches that sound, the longīis very broad, so that there is no possibility of confusing them in a Cockney’s ear. But is the sound Cockney? Granted it is very prevalent in E. and N. London, yet it is rarely found in W. and S.W. My belief is that it is especially an Essex variety. There is no doubt about its prevalence in Essex, so that [very roughly indeed] “I say” there becomes “oy sy.” Then as regards theōandou. These are never pronounced alike. Theōcertainly often imitates receivedow, though it has more distinctly anōcommencement; but whenthat is the case,ouhas a totally different sound, which dialect-writers usually mark asaow, having a broadācommencement, almostainbad. Finer speakers—shopmen and clerks—will use a finera. The sound of shortuinnut, does not sound to me at all likeeinnet. There are great varieties of this “natural vowel,” as some people call it, and our receivednutis much finer than the general southern provincial and northern Scotch sounds, between which lie the mid and north England sounds rhyming tofootnearly, and various transitional forms. Certainly the sounds ofnut,gnatare quite different, and are never confused by speakers; yet you would write both asnet.

The pronunciation of the Metropolitan area is extremely mixed; no one form prevails. We may put aside educated or received English as entirely artificial. The N., N.E., and E. districts all partake of an East Anglian character; but whether that is recent, or belongs to the Middle Anglian character of Middlesex, is difficult to say. I was born in the N. district, within the sound of Bow Bells (the Cockney limits), over seventy years ago, and I do not recall theipronunciation ofāin my boyish days, nor do I recollect having seen it used by the older humourists. Nor do I find it in “Errors of Pronunciation and Improper Expressions, Used Frequently and Chiefly by theInhabitants of London,” 1817, which likewise does not note any pronunciation ofōlikeow. Hence I am inclined to believe that both are modernisms, due to the growing of London into the adjacent provinces. They do not seem to me yet prevalent in the W. districts, though the N.W. is transitional. South of the Thames, in the S.W. districts, I think they are practically unknown. In the S.E. districts, which dip into N. Kent, the finer form ofaowforouis prevalent. The uneducated of course form a mode of speech among themselves. But I am sorry to find even school teachers much infected with theī,ow,aow, pronunciations ofā,ō,ou, in N. districts.

Of course your Cockney orthography goes upon very broad lines, and you are quite justified in raising a laugh by apparent confusions, where no confusions are made by the speakers themselves, as Hans Breitmann did with the German. The confusion is only in our ears. They speak a language we do not use. To write the varieties of sounds, especially of diphthongs, with anything like correctness, requires a phonetic alphabet which cannot even be read, much less written, without great study, such as you cannot look for in readers who want only to be amused. But another question arises, Should we lay down a pronunciation? There never has been any authority capable of doingso. Orthoepists may protest, but the fashion of pronunciation will again change, as it has changed so often and so markedly during the last six hundred years; see the proofs in myEarly English Pronunciation. Why should we not pronounceāas we doī, pronouncingīas we dooy? Why should we not callōas we now callow, pronouncing that asaow? Is not ourāa change fromī(the Germanei,ai) insay,away,pain, etc.? Is not ouroua change from our sound ofooincow, etc.? Again, ourooreplaces an oldohsound. There is nothing but fashion which rules this. But when sounds are changed in one set of vowels, a compensating change takes place in another set, and so no confusion results. In one part of Cheshire I met with four sounds ofyinmy, never confused by natives, although a received speaker hears only one, and all arose from different sources. Why is one pronunciationhorrid(or aw-ud), and another not? Simply because they mark social grades. Of course I prefer my own pronunciation, it’s been my companion for so many years. But others, just as much of course, prefer theirs. When I brought out thePhonetic News, in phonetic spelling, many years ago, a newsvendor asked me, “Why writeneewz? We always saynooze.”

Very truly yours,Alexander J. Ellis.

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Y.

Back to Index Next